WHAT’S Heather Frost been up to? The Tewkesbury Tribal elder (11 kids – one more and she can rival Jacobs and the Jews) is scheduled to move into a 1,850 square foot council-provided “mansion”. The Mail’s Simon Tomlinson holds his nose and writes:

Noise really bad… no hope of watching TV… mattresses burning… greenhouse glass smashed by rocks’: Widow’s diary reveals ‘hell’ of living next to ‘benefits queen’ mother-of-11 for five (long) years

And:

Jobless Heather Frost ‘ruined the last years of Doreen Freeman’s life’

Doreen, billed as an 81-year-old pensioner (or benefits claimants, as we call ’em), says the Frosts “smashed her greenhouse with rocks… burned soiled mattress near home and threw excrement in garden”.

To boot, Doreen:

“Suffered countless sleepless nights because of constant banging.”

Eleven kids, readers. ELEVEN.

We learn that Doreen Freeman, 81, has died. Her son is Dr James Freeman, 63, a senior university lecturer. He has made public his mum’s diary, which detailed Frost’s “five-year campaign of terror”.

Terror highlights:

Garden: “Iron bars on the back garden, also broken toys, smashing glass of the greenhouse with rocks sanitary towel soiled baby underclothes.”

Telly: “Sound turned off my television because of banging on staircase wall.”

Boards: “Noise is really bad. The only way I can describe it is like floor boards are being lifted and slammed back down”

June 28: “First time for over two years, I had sound on the tele at 3.15 for ‘Countdown’ because it was the last one in the series.”

She says Frost “told me to stop giving her children f****** 20 questions and shouting abuse at her.”

March 19: No hope of watching television at all, no sound on, only what I see on the screen. Just silent films or whatever. Has been going on as long as I can remember.”

This is all broadcast in the Mail, which thinks nothing of speaking truth to power, in this instance in the form of an unemployed, cancer-survivor called Heather Frost.

Tomlinson adds:

Frost squandered her benefits money on designer clothes, plush three-piece suits, and on a £600 pedigree Labradoodle, which now lives with her father, Royston Frost.

We have previously met a horse called Annie and a parrot called Jake.

Frost is given no right to reply. But it’s all too much for Mail readers who react:

Gas Them!

Dirty scrounging pigs like that should be put down, along with their families, no one should have ot look out onto that mess.– JB , London, 06/3/2013 16:57

Orphan them!

Heather Frost should be kicked out. Then have her children taken away. They would have a chance of a normal life then instead of probably going on to cause even more misery for others due to their useless mother.– Chris , Kent, 06/3/2013 16:56

Nose breathers!

Why is it working class kids have dummies in years after their middle class counterparts have been weaned off them?– Alf Artagen, Glasgow, 6/3/2013 17:11

Make them eat mud and nuclear waste!

The welfare system is immoral for rewarding underclass familes for breeding and consuming more of the Earth’s resources – and it will never end because left-leaning politicians condemn any proposal to make these people do their fair share. This is socialism for you.– Victim of the EU, New World, United Kingdom, 6/3/2013 16:55

Bang ’em up!

This woman should get zero benefits. Let the fathers of her kids pay. If they don’t pay, chuck them in jail. Enough is enough.– Caractacus, Shrewsbury, 6/3/2013 16:39

Lovely stuff from the Mail, which once wrote:

The number of internet trolls convicted in court of bullying online has soared by more than 150 per cent in just four years…

Crime prevention minister Jeremy Browne told MailOnline: ‘What is illegal offline is illegal online. People should not be able to use social media to post anonymous abusive or threatening comments without facing any consequences.

‘We have robust legislation in place to deal with internet trolls, cyber-stalking and harassment but we recognise that having these laws is not enough on its own. That is why we are working with the Crown Prosecution Service and the police to improve guidance and training for police and prosecutors.

And:

Mary Beard suffered vile online abuse about her looks after appearing Question Time… The audience roared and cheered. And within minutes, anti-Beard comments were piling up — not just on Twitter (Beard is an enthusiastic tweeter) — but also on an internet website called Don’t Start Me Off. While many of the Twitter comments were rude, furious and outraged, they focused mainly on Beard’s Question Time comments, so she took the trouble to reply to pretty much all of them.

On the website, however, the comments were in the main, vile, sexually abusive and hideously personal — concerning her body parts, sexual preferences and family.

And (Heather Frost survived cancer):

Vile internet trolls target cancer victim on Facebook

And:

Miss Brookes’s ordeal began last November when her daughter told her that an X Factor contestant, Frankie Cocozza, had received hate mail on Facebook. Stung by the cruelty, the mother left a message on his Facebook page, saying simply: ‘Keep your chin up, Frankie, they’ll move on to someone else soon.’

Within minutes bullies on the site turned on her, writing vile abuse including ‘Your [sic] a desperate pedo b****’ and ‘Ur [sic] a ****ing dog’. More than 100 cruel messages were left in just 24 hours. Miss Brookes said: ‘Facebook users began deliberately targeting me, writing under my comment that I was a paedophile and hoping that I would die.’…

On Mother’s Day this year, trolls published the single mother’s home address in Brighton.

Like the Mail does with Heather Frost.

Internet trolls are undoubtedly a scourge of the internet age. People say things to others online, cowering behind anonymity, that they would never dare to say in person.

Maybe Heather Frost should sue the Mail? Most likely, she’ll get legal aid…

Trolling was, and sometimes still is, an art form when well-done (I’m an old-school geek, old enough to remember Usenet before the ‘Eternal September’; I *know* trolling 🙂 )

A lot of what’s described as trolling today is rather poorly done – but unless it totally prevents useful discourse and causes everything to degenerate into flame wars, trolling (AKA being deliberately outrageous and provocative) isn’t a bad thing per. se.

Just remember the old adage, ‘don’t feed the trolls!’; a lot of the perceived problem with trolling is the fault of those who respond (and typically over-react) to it, not the fault of the trolls.

The demonisation and attempted criminalisation of trolling today is sad reflection on the state of free speech in the UK, and the illiberal notion that has grown up that people have somehow acquired a ‘right not to be offended’.

Virtually every case in which someone has been arrested, questioned, tried, or punished for speech (online or offline) in the UK in the last few years would not be a criminal matter at all in the USA – and the USA is much the better for it!